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Dessert

Almond Pudding

A sweet custard made with flour, butter, almonds, sugar, milk, eggs, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk and butter in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. Take a small amount of the milk to dissolve the flour.

  3. Add the flour mixture back to the boiling milk.

  4. Cook until the mixture is very thick, then let it cool.

Finish and cook

  1. Mix in the sugar, chopped almonds, and the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-greased pudding mold.

  5. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard; whipped whites lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and body to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard.

The step that matters

Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites; stirring hard would deflate them and leave a denser pudding.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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